October 4, 2012
Photo credit: Luther Caverly

Protect and serve: But at what cost?

“I’m paying the tab – I had the fancy coffee,” she said and I knew not to argue — Linda Duxbury is a force of nature.

Recognized as a Canadian leader in workplace management, generational differences in work values, the changing face of the public service, career development and employee mental health, she wears many hats and she is eloquent and passionate about each one. You can see it on her face as she animatedly discusses her latest national study.

It set off a flurry of media attention as it’s the first look at work-life issues for Canadian police services.
Alongside colleague Dr. Christopher Higgins of the University of Western Ontario, they surveyed more than 7,000 employees from 25 Canadian police boards including some 4,500 sworn officers and 2,500 civilians. The size of the sample allowed them to look at both rank and gender.

“Even at the entry-level position of constable only about 20 per cent of police are female and as you go up in rank that number diminishes dramatically — so that at the top you have almost no women,” explains Duxbury, adding that many of those high-ranking female officers do not have children.

When you think of police stress you think of gun battles, dangerous situations … [but] what stresses police officers is how they are managed

The study also explored stress on police.

“When you think of police stress you think of gun battles, dangerous situations, knocking down doors and stopping a bank robbery and you think of stopping violent crime — but actually the data is unequivocal,” she said. “What stresses police officers is how they are managed. It’s the management issues that are causing them problems which is why as someone from a business school [is] very interested in all of this.”

The Ottawa Police service was one of the participating police boards and this isn’t the first time Duxbury has worked with them. In fact, the way in which stress was measured in the latest study was built in the original study she did with then-Police Chief Vern White who wanted to look at work intensification and role overload within the Criminal Investigative Services.

“[T]he Ottawa police are really in my mind trendsetters or leaders in terms of looking at mental health issues within the force,” said Duxbury. “They are actually trying to address these issues and are quite forward thinking.”

The Ottawa police are really in my mind trendsetters or leaders in terms of looking at mental health issues

This is important she says, as the stressors on police officers come from a variety of different angles: the news media, citizen groups, understaffing, as well as the unpredictability of the job and the demands of shift-work. All this leads to a high demand job with low control Duxbury explains.

“When you see some of the data these are healthy young men generally speaking where you’ve got 50% of them reporting high stress and almost 40% [reporting] high depressed mood,” she said. “The job is taking its toll.”

This toll is why the Ottawa Police took part in Duxbury’s study.

“[Participating] was a tremendous coup for us because we learned so much about it,” said Ottawa Police Chief Charles Bordeleau. “It helps us as not only a police service but as a profession to figure out exactly what the kind of issues are our people facing and what kind of things do we need to put into place to mitigate those to ideally prevent them from escalating to the point where its effecting our people.”

The Ottawa Police Service has already implemented a holistic program that deals with nutrition, fitness and psychology and they are working on implementing a new program that will see peer-support services introduced.

[Participating] was a tremendous coup for us because we learned so much about it

So what’s next for Linda Duxbury?

Around the time of the interview, she was finishing up final touches on the full 2011-2012 national study of work-life and employee well-being issues being conducted in which members of the Carleton University community also participated.

She is applying for a SSHRC partnership grant to look into police management with Tullio Caputo from the Department of Sociology and Anthropology, Craig Bennell from the Department of Psychology and two Sprott colleagues, Steve Murphy and Mike McIntyre.

“Police stress and police management, crosses all kinds of boundaries at Carleton,” she said.
“A big part of policing is how do you continue to pay for it? We have to start looking at police as a business that needs to be managed well, yet most police officers rise up the ranks because they are operationally and tactically excellent but when they get to the place of managing people many do not have either the skills or the time to manage the people in their area.”

Read more about Linda’s latest study:
Carleton University News Release

Reports:
Summary of Key Findings
Summary of Key Differences Associated with Rank and Gender
Full Report

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